Self-employed income stats

Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE)’s Labour Market Dashboard is an online interactive tool that displays labour market information from many different sources in one place. It can be used to understand trends in employment and salaries.

For example, how do your earnings stack up against other self-employed people — and how has the average changed over the years? This graph uses data from Statistics NZ’s New Zealand Income Survey. In 2016 the self-employed median weekly income was $720, compared with $937 for wage and salary workers. The self-employed median was down on 2014’s high of $748, but remained well above 2010-2012’s median of $575.

If you want to explore it further, including how self-employed income rates compare with those of waged and salaried workers, go to the Explorer section, then choose:

theme = the workforce

source = NZIS New Zealand Income Survey

dataset = working age persons income summary.

Regional pay rates

How does the pay you’re offering compare with other employers in your region? Use the interactive labour market dashboard to dig into average hourly and weekly rates by region, using 2016 data from the New Zealand Income Survey.

Here are some examples giving median pay rates — that is, the amount halfway between the lowest rates and the highest.

Region

Median hourly rate

Median weekly rate

Auckland

$25.00

$983

Waikato

$23.02

$921

Nelson/Marlborough

$20.80

$810

Southland

$21.92

$903

To check pay rates in your region, go to the Explorer section of the dashboard, then choose:

theme = the workforce

source = NZIS New Zealand Income Survey

dataset = person in paid employment by average weekly income and RCA (Regional Council Areas).

Overseas workers: The industries with the greatest number of long-term migrant workers are:

health care and social assistance

manufacturing

education and training

professional, scientific and technical services.

Most are in permanent work, rather than temporary roles, according to Statistics NZ’s Survey of Working Life.

Work trends

“The dashboard will help businesses interested in economic data find what they need in a timely and convenient way,” says Nita Zodgekar, MBIE’s labour market trends manager. “Previously, if you wanted to find these statistics you had to spend time going to several different websites to find the most up-to-date data.”

New datasets will be added over the next few months that cast light on the workplace, including: